TV streaming piracy service with 26M yearly visits shut down

Photocall, a TV piracy streaming platform with over 26 million users annually, has ceased operations following a joint investigation by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) and DAZN.

The piracy service provided users with unauthorized access to 1,127 TV channels from 60 countries, including live sports content. In total, almost 30% of its visitors were from Spain, with over 13% from Mexico, and 6% each from Germany, Italy, and the United States.

“This illegal service did not offer DAZN channels, but it did redistribute the content of some of our partners – especially MotoGP and Formula 1,” said Oscar Vilda, CEO of DAZN Iberia.

Photocall was also allowing users to watch “Serie A, the NFL (National Football League), the NHL (National Hockey League), and the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), and club channels like Real Madrid TV, Barça TV, and Betis TV.”

Photocall operators agreed to cease operations after being approached by the two anti-piracy organizations and reaching a settlement, with all domains now transferred to ACE and redirected to ACE’s Watch Legally website.

A DAZN spokesperson couldn’t immediately provide a statement when contacted by BleepingComputer earlier today for more details.

​Today’s announcement follows a joint law enforcement operation coordinated by Europol that aimed to disrupt digital piracy services.

The operation identified 69 sites with over 11.8 million annual visitors and referred 25 illegal IPTV services to cryptocurrency providers for disruption. It also connected $55 million (over €47 million) in cryptocurrency to illegal streaming services and initiated 44 new investigations.

ACE focuses on shutting down illegal streaming services and comprises more than 50 media and entertainment firms, including major television networks and film studios such as Universal Studios, Amazon, Apple TV+, The Walt Disney Studios, Netflix, Paramount Global, Sony Pictures, and Warner Bros Discovery.

In recent years, it targeted a string of other large-scale illegal streaming networks in joint operations with law enforcement, including the U.S. Department of Justice, Europol, and Interpol.

Since the start of the year, these actions have led to the shutdown of Rare Breed TV, another illegal IPTV service provider that offered access to more than 28,000 channels and over 100,000 movies and series, and Streameast, which claimed to be the world’s largest illegal live sports streaming network.